The same day, a slightly different day. A day spent discovering that the knack he had learned with his right foot worked differently in his left, followed by yet another repetition.

The ferryman appeared occasionally, and Encrid continued to respect his wishes by keeping his mouth shut. This no longer even angered the ferryman. The bastard had always been this sort of bastard. He simply said his piece.

"It's already over."

So spoke the bard singing of despair, the farmer sowing seeds of frustration.

Encrid let the ferryman's words wash over him, thinking only of how to gather and hold Will in his left foot as he had in his right. He kept at it regardless of what was said in front of him.

Gathering it in his right foot felt like bringing a sword straight down. He tried the same with his left, but it simply would not work.

Why?

Ultimately, it was a matter of control. He ought to be able to move it as he moved his hands and feet. Though invisible, it came from his own body, yet refused to move as he wished. He just had to repeat it, again and again.

As he thought, the ferryman's expression underwent a peculiar change. His eyes widened slightly, his chin tucked in a little. That alone changed his whole appearance. When he opened his mouth, both his tone and his words were unlike anything before.

"Reduce it."

The words came without context. Encrid blinked, wondering what the ferryman meant. He had sometimes thought the ferryman possessed more than one personality, but he had never seen him change so abruptly before his eyes.

The ferryman immediately reverted to normal. Today's ferryman was the sort who enjoyed spouting an endless stream of useless words.

"Go. Go and enjoy it. A today without a shred of pleasure, filled with nothing but suffering."

Only after repeating today more than fifty further times did Encrid learn the knack of gathering Will in his left foot. It felt like learning anew how to move each individual finger. He could clearly feel it and knew it was attached to his body, but he had to attend to every detail, then forget that conscious attention. Only then would he be able to use it naturally.

How did he have to move his fingers to grasp the sword at his waist? Within the simple act of placing the grip between thumb and forefinger and closing his hand lay everything from applying strength through the third, fourth, and fifth fingers to holding the grip in his grasp. He was learning it all anew. More than that, it felt as though he were learning how to breathe all over again.

He consciously repeated what he had once done unconsciously, then returned it to the realm of the unconscious. The entire process was utterly unfamiliar, but he considered anything he could accomplish through repetition easy.

Could he toss an enormous boulder as though it were a pebble in a game? That would make things easy.

The thought occurred to him, too.

Encrid saw many things as he repeated today. Had it begun with Audin radiating light?

"Take this."

He was gasping for breath after activating his Will incorrectly. Jaxon tried to feed him a strange medicine. Encrid did not know what it was, but he could tell it was immensely precious. It was a round pink pill twice the size of a thumbnail, with a hard-looking exterior.

Even its scent was different. The moment he smelled it, his mind cleared and his vision sharpened. If he swallowed it, he would not die. His intuition told him so.

"It can save anyone who isn't already dead. Give up your Will."

From Jaxon's words, taking the medicine would leave him an invalid, but he would survive. There was an unprecedented intensity in Jaxon's eyes, as though he would beat Encrid to death if he refused to take it.

It was Jaxon's last resort, unable as he was to stand by and watch him die. Encrid refused. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut and hold out. As he died, he saw Jaxon's face contort. The expression was so twisted he could scarcely believe his own eyes. Had Jaxon even been capable of making such a face?

There was a today like that.

And there were other todays. Once, on his way toward death again, he was granted a brief reprieve filled with pain.

"Come out!"

Rem chose a rougher method. Will had burned Encrid's organs away, leaving him only a few final breaths. Standing before him, Rem's hair began to whip about.

Encrid could not tell exactly what Rem was doing, but he sensed something intuitively. Rem was attempting something like Audin's light or Jaxon's medicine.

He was right.

It was a spell called Return to Life, a secret art that ate away at the user's own lifespan. In a sense, it resembled the teleportation spell Encrid had suffered.

In what sense? It required luck.

Rem failed. Even his exceptional talent and lifespan could not hold on to the dying man's soul. Encrid's flesh began to stiffen again.

"Fuck!"

That was a today in which he heard Rem's furious voice. Wrinkles multiplied across Rem's face in an instant.

It did not end with those three. Encrid died over and over as he learned to send Will into his right arm, his left, and each part of his body, and make it stay. If even a little life remained, even a single breath, they all tried something similar.

"Take it. Let it stay in your body. You can live."

Sinar tried to give him the spiritual essence she held within her. It touched Encrid's back as a fist-sized green light, but it was useless.

"Cough."

The moment the Fairy's spiritual essence dispersed to no purpose, part of Sinar's body crumbled like dust. One arm vanished that way. Yet her expression remained calm. No, she wore a faint smile.

"Go on ahead."

There was a today when he saw a desolate smile the usual Sinar would never have shown.

"Father, O Lord!"

Teresa sang a hymn at the top of her voice, too.

"I will shelter you within my world."

Esther spoke with sparkling stars in her eyes. Those stars shone, trying to draw Encrid's barely breathing body somewhere else. She intended to confine him within her spell world for the time being, hiding him from the reaper's gaze. It was a trick using a kind of curse, and naturally, it failed.

"Not so fast."

Curses were the ferryman's domain. More importantly, Esther was not even ready to cast the spell properly. The spell failed. Mana surged backward. As the price of forcing her world to manifest, both her eyes burst with a pop. There was a today when Esther seemed to weep tears of blood.

For reasons Encrid did not understand, Pell even took Idol Slayer and stabbed his own abdomen at an angle. It was useless. Pell merely vomited blood.

Todays like these passed before Encrid's eyes. Flowed past. Like scraps of cloth falling into a river, soaking through and sinking out of sight, today sank, flowed away, and vanished. In those vanished todays, everyone did something. Encrid died watching them. Died, and died again.

"Did you enjoy watching?"

The ferryman asked. Encrid did not answer.

"Give up. Move on to the next. I have prepared walls for you to overcome as you advance, one by one. Isn't this the path you desire?"

So said the ferryman. Which today was this? Encrid had not counted. There was no point.

This was a today he could escape whenever he wished. Was he being stubborn despite that? The ferryman told him the path was wrong, that his stubbornness was futile. Why press on without even being certain this was the right way?

The ferryman was probably right. His choice might be wrong. So what?

If he could only find out by going, he had to go. And that was what Encrid did.

"Don't you resent the heavens?"

The ferryman asked.

"Don't you hate the world?"

The ferryman asked again.

"What of the gods who made you be born into such a world, with such talent? Don't you hate them?"

It was easy to find something to blame. The ferryman urged him on without cease.

Then, just as before, a different personality would suddenly emerge in the middle of it all and say:

"Reduce it."

Reduce what?

The personality that appeared in brief flashes soon vanished. At some point, the ferryman stopped relying on words alone. He rummaged through Encrid's memories. Those he had ultimately failed to protect appeared in his dreams. The nightmares began. Darkness descended.

"You will be left alone, floundering in a land where the sun never rises."

So said the ferryman, but Encrid had already traveled that road. He had experienced it in the desert. The ferryman sought to steal people, worth, and meaning from him. All Encrid lost was comfort. Worth, people, and meaning did not disappear merely because he could not see them.

"You will wish for death instead."

He dreamed a nightmare of an arrow flying into his heart and leaving a hole.

"Look upon the darkness within you."

Even if he became a knight, what could one swordsman change? Could he find his way through a desert? What was so remarkable about protecting a few people with a sword?

The ferryman murmured endlessly. Endlessly tried to shake Encrid.

Even without delusions, could there truly be not a trace of soot?

There was. There were wounds, scars, and suffering. Yet he knew how to move forward despite them. So forward was all he went. Encrid took another step. Toward the sun, toward the goal that was his dream.

Would he live, or die? Would he stake his life on something uncertain?

For what?

Encrid had seen something in his nightmares, in the repeating today, in a past where he had failed to protect someone, and in the boy he had protected who dreamed of gathering herbs. Call it light and it was light. Call it a flower and it became a flower. A star if called a star, a dream if called a dream.

As he murmured over and over of light, stars, and dreams, his field of vision suddenly expanded, and he could at last see his own body objectively. Could he call it the moment he caught hold of a certain current? He had found a kind of sensation that words could not precisely express.

'I was wrong.'

Will was not something to force into motion. No, it would be more accurate to say that having forced a path open and ventured down it, he now understood how to proceed. The fragment of understanding he had gained while escaping the desert connected with his earlier insights. Everything from the stab he had learned while desperately struggling in his first today to what he had realized after escaping the desert.

Complexity and simplicity.

Discarding and blending.

In the end, Encrid could not discard anything he had learned, mastered, or understood. Oara had told him to let go, but instead of discarding it, he had blended it all together.

"Reduce it."

The ferryman spoke. What? It did not matter what. Whether he meant determination, dreams, purpose, ambition, or desire, the ferryman was telling him to discard it. But Encrid had not the slightest intention of doing so. He would neither diminish nor discard anything.

Dreaming of knighthood, he had resolved to protect everything behind him. He would not let even one of those things slip away. He had vowed to the stars, the sky, and the sun, gazing upon the two moons, that he would keep the oath he had sworn as a child.

A bard's song had given a boy a dream. A line of song had flown like a meteor into his chest, pierced it, and left its mark. Did those who dreamed not deserve to fulfill those dreams? Encrid had repeated that to himself countless times. That was how he had come to believe. Even if it was blind faith, he would not let his determination break.

He would no longer stand by and watch a child die behind him.

"No."

Encrid answered. He would not reduce it. A declaration of determination. At that moment, a storm raged within his body.

He was not to force it to move. He had to leave it be. All he needed was to hold on to it. Encrid felt the wind. The wind passing through his body. He felt sunlight. Sunlight entering his body and warming him. Sunlight and wind mingled, turning orange and filling his vision.

Encrid had repeated today more than five hundred times. He had been a blind man trapped in a maze, yet by feeling and remembering every part of it, he had finally found his way out.

"Truly, you are a madman."

The ferryman's awed words faded from his ears, and his presence vanished.

Encrid blinked. It was his favorite time of day. Sunset. The sky felt so close. The orange filling his vision was the glow of the setting sun. He could reach out and grasp the clouds; if he swung his sword now, he could cut down anyone. Strength brimmed throughout his body.

A sense of omnipotence filled him. He could clearly see every gaze directed at him. Amid the feeling that he could do anything, he distinguished with absolute clarity and precision what he would do and what he had not done. He also knew how to sustain the omnipotence continually welling up inside him, and the Will that was its source.

"I need some sleep."

Encrid spoke and closed his eyes. The people watching him showed not a trace of a smile. One of them approached and caught his back.

* * *

"Did he?"

It was Roford who caught Encrid, supporting his back. He simply happened to be nearby. The others did not move a muscle. They did not need to. Encrid was not a man who would crack his skull merely by falling backward. Above all, everyone was too astonished for words.

It was into that silence that Sinar's voice had rung out. Had he? A question, to be precise, cast into the air, addressed to everyone.

"Looks like he did," Rem answered.

"He did," Jaxon confirmed.

"Father, did You lend Your aid?"

Audin murmured in amazement. Ragna repeatedly tightened and loosened his hand around his sword's grip. Luagarne puffed out her cheeks but could make no sound. She was too astonished.

Two people did not understand what had happened here. Roford and Pell.

What was this? Roford had no idea. His body had simply moved in response to Encrid saying he would sleep.

Pell tilted his head, his hand resting habitually on Idol Slayer's grip. Something had clearly happened, something had changed, but he did not know what. All he knew was that motivation had suddenly risen within him, seemingly without cause. Watching Encrid, who had eaten obscene amounts, slept, and rested, then stared at the sunset, blinked slowly a few times, and collapsed, sent a shiver through him.

He wanted to get up and swing his sword that instant. He had to do something. Pell rose and left for the training ground. He could not contain this surge of motivation. It was as though someone had forcibly thrust it into his body.

Roford felt much the same. He, too, had felt a thrill, and thought he had gained something akin to insight. Both had been affected by the Will flowing naturally from Encrid.

Still seated, Esther opened one eye. Summoning a portion of her spell world to look through, she saw an enormous star.

'What did he do?'

She did not know. But one thing was certain. That man had fulfilled the dream he was forever talking about.

"Now I've seen everything," Rem said.

Everyone felt much the same. Jaxon, Audin, Ragna, even Luagarne. The Frog, with her sense for reading talent, almost felt she was dreaming. What had happened was that impossible.

Encrid lost consciousness then and did not awaken until a week later. Several things happened in the meantime, but none of those were what mattered to everyone.

And when Encrid awoke, this was what he thought:

Nothing had changed. He had simply taken one truly great step forward.

The Will dwelling naturally within his body made him think so.